Reality...At Least So Far

To be honest, blogging is a very difficult thing for me at the moment. I sit and stare at the keyboard and haven’t the foggiest idea of anything important I have to say. It’s frustrating. That being said, here’s my best effort…

As Rachel and I try to learn how to balance running an efficient business with pouring ourselves into the people we have come here to help, we are finding it is a more challenging balancing act than we would care to admit. Rachel came home earlier this week and shared with me an experience she had. She had been walking home from visiting some of the Suubi women and noticed a young girl walking very slowly with her hands over her face crying. Upon getting a little closer to the girl, Rachel noticed she was bleeding from the mouth. The young girl’s mother had beaten her because she was not working hard enough at home. Rachel took her to a clinic, got her some medicine, treated her to a banana, Coke, and doughnuts and wasn’t sure what to do from there. The girl insisted she was ready to go back home and she understood how to properly apply her medicine. Although Rachel’s response to this experience was, “How can I send this young girl back to a mother who beats her,” my response was, “imagine the good you did in this little girl’s heart even if it was just for a couple hours.” This is an experience in which one feels they are really helping, even if it’s for a brief moment. Yesterday, I spent the majority of the day gluing tiny stickers on small beads and walking all over town just to find a particular zipper I was looking for. These are experiences in which one questions whether they are really helping at all. Although it’s not always glamorous, the reality we are experiencing is most of what we do is not, as Dave Hansow would say, sexy. Most of what we do is not seen or heard about in inspiring documentary films or talked about on cool hip websites. That’s probably the way it should be. What I can say is what we do is necessary, is important, is making a difference. It’s the efficient piecing together of the small mundane things with the big inspiring things that really allow us to truly help. Realizing this has helped me a great deal.

I have really been enjoying my time with some of our friends around the compound. Betty takes care of the house for us. She lives behind our house on the compound with her son Kimby and her cousin Sharon who is in grade school. George is our night guard. We see him from about 6 pm on during the week. They have all become such a delight for me to be around. We are all starting to become more integrated into each other’s daily routines in terms of conversation and relational dynamics. This has been such a joy for me to experience.

Days One & Two

It is the morning after our first night in the house…our first night in our new home. It has been an interesting start to this journey. Our 26-hour trip to Entebbe International Airport in Uganda ended with Rachel and I waiting in line at the lost luggage counter. Joe, Melissa and Heather picked us up at the Central Inn yesterday around noon. We proceeded to Kampala from there.

Kampala is like nothing I have ever seen or experienced before…nothing. Complete chaos. People everywhere. Filth consumes everything. The smells are indescribable. We began the day at Café Pap where we enjoyed some fresh Mango juice, straight from the fruit. We proceeded to Owino Market to find paper for beads. Owino reminds me of the slums you see in Slumdog Millionaire. The smell of raw meat covered in flies, sewage, old fruit and vegetables, human bodies that probably haven’t seen a shower or bath in months, among numerous other unknown scents was enough to keep me in the balance between losing it completely and barely keeping it all in. We were carted around the city in an old, beat up mini-van of sorts. Then came rush hour traffic…We would literally sit in traffic (not moving) for 10-15 minutes at a time only to move forward all of 30 ft before the waiting continued. The traffic was bumper to bumper and in all directions. What I mean by this is cars, piki’s (motorcycles), bicycles, buses, etc. were stuck facing all directions, no rhyme or reason, facing 360 different directions like a puzzle, inches separating one vehicle from the next. Mass chaos. The 2-hour drive back to Jinja was nice for the most part. Speed limits are non-existent. Go at your own pace. Pass whenever you feel like it and hope oncoming traffic leaves enough room for you to squeak by. There seemed to be a consistent presence of flashing headlights; no idea as to why. I am still working on solving this mystery.

My sleep pattern is still working itself out. Getting to sleep is not typically the problem…staying asleep is. Over and out. RS